You people HAVE an option. That’s why they’re doing both!!
I swear there’s not a rational bone in any of your bodies.

(Full disclosure, I’m currently working on a device that rips out all of your pubic hair searching for explosives residue unless you give me one hundred and four dollars. And opting out of entering the device is, apparently, cause for a civil suit. I’m making us safer.)

It uses X-Ray radiation at very low levels . . . to say X-Ray is “safe” is misleading. It can cause cancer in high enough doses, and even in low doses in very rare cases. “Safe” is just shorthand in the medical community because X-Ray is a diagnostic tool with a value that far, far outweighs potential risks, but even then, it is off limits to pregnant and potentially pregnant women, and the rest of us wear gonad shields and lead shields over parts of the body not being X-Rayed.

So when we say “safe” we are talking cost vs. benefit.

The catch here is that there is no benefit to these stupid devices. A time saver (which they aren’t, really) is not a good enough benefit.

The reality is that if we want to live in a free society we have to live with a little bit of risk and danger. Only cowards support eroding our freedom and our privacy in favor of a little more safety, and really it is only perceived safety. A safety placebo if you will.

All I noticed was a world and cosmic rings revolving and intersecting rhythmically… left, right… calming me and lulling me into a sense of, um, security.

Seriously, it is no wonder the average consumer of TV news has no idea what is going on if that kind of hypnotic device is in regular use. (I am not in the USA and have never watched anything from CNN before. I genuinely did find it hard to focus on the content.)

He asks us to do our own research while instructing us to use his information. He spouts the same talking points everywhere, but when confronted with a reasonable question about a conflict of interest, he doesn’t hesitate a moment, just moves right along covering the bullet points, avoiding real answers.

Anon#53:
You have 10 million flights per year. But that’s in airplanes, the number of passengers per year is more like 800 million. So multiply by 80 to get about 5 people per year killed by these things.

(Or if you prefer, it’s like the TSA choosing to blow up a plane full of passengers every 17 years instead of just putting a bullet in one person’s head.)

And arguments about profiling aside, how does aggressively searching Anderson Cooper help anyone? I mean, surely they recognized him and then had his passport to dispel any concerns about mistaken identity.

Does the TSA seriously expect Anderson Cooper to blow up a plane? And assuming they do not, then this is just political correctness, which in this case means knowingly wasting security efforts. That is, security theater of the most obvious sort.

You know, I bet John here doesn’t have to walk through the scanner or get a pat down. I bet he gets to just walk on by. .. I’m not 100% sure but that’s how I feel after watching this video. Also why didn’t they ask about the radiation these machines give out too? VibroCount, I agree with what you said.

I vote for really bad dye job. The eyebrows look like they’re there, only so grey they appear opaque.

Weirder is the partially worn off botox and the apparent eye-lift. Combined with “stay on target” rote spewing of talking points, this bureaucrat comes off robotic, unsympathetic and evasive. I’m surprised he’s not winded from dodging all those questions.

Make no mistake about it — this guy is a plant or pawn for the right wing military-industrial complex, the machine that profits from our fears and makes billions off of the sale of magic black boxes sold by lobbyists.

If shoe bombs created the need to take off our shoes at the checkpoints, underwear bombs created the need to walk through porno-scanners or be subjected to “intimate” groping, what liberties will the inevitable asshole bomb, a bomb that will complete the next propagandistic stage in clockwork fashion, require us to shed?

As a small ray of hope, I recently passed through the San Diego airport (where this whole debacle started) and as far as I could tell the pornoscanners were not in use at all. Even in the checkpoints which had been entirely converted with prominent backscatter machines and GET USED TO THIS signage, passengers were being directed to the single metal detectors off to the side, where they were given very brief and lackadaisical pat downs before going on their way.

Could have just been a timing thing, but I’d prefer to humor the illusion that the powers that be are finally getting the message about something, even if they’re lying through their teeth about it as they do everything else.

“We just want to partner with the travelling public…”, as long as by “partner” we mean “compliance”.

TSA makes arbirary rules, citizens must obey – Partners.

The bottom line is that the whole TSA passenger screening process does nothing for real security, creates a very real risk of terror attack by congregating large numbers of people in a vunerable area and violates citizens freedom.

Where is our leadership? Where is the “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself” speech update?

To be fair, to say that anything causes cancer implies that it is the sole factor. Indeed, as I have said for years, everything causes cancer in this meaning. Eating food and breathing allow your body to metabolize food which create free radicals. These harm your cells DNA and increases the likelihood of a malignant mutation.

X-rays at any level contribute to the likelihood of cancer. The question is, are you willing to receive a reasonably above average dose of radiation, beyond that you will already get by flying, for absolutely no real benefit.

Terrorists are assholes and they have assholes, too. And stomachs. I know you saw the dark knight. Body cavities are the place to hide things. Inmates in the US prison system have known this for years. It’s nature’s pocket.

All this tech protects against is non-metallic weaponry that can be hidden easily between maybe 2 layers of clothing and the skin. So basically it protects only against ceramic/plastic knives and shivs. This tech is pretty clearly a horrible return/risk, even compared to standard security technology.

Honestly, why doesn’t the TSA just provide security by telling people to man the fuck up and kill anyone who tries to hijack their plane? The terrorists will be outnumbered, they won’t have guns, they will probably have a dinky shiv or knife that might give you a nasty cut (which you will almost certainly live through if they don’t cut your throat). Normal people are going to make up most of the plane and they should be able to take 10-12 mentally ill people on. Not to mention all the adipose armor americans have.

Enough with the Hasbara already. Israel is not exactly an ideal model to follow in the fight against terror.

Anyway 9/11 assholes said that part of their motivations for terror is Israel’s crimes and US support for it to carry them out/get away with them. It’s things like that which encourage qaeda attacks in the first place.

It’s been 9 years and the same still goes on: more US money and weapons to Israel to continue to occupy, kill, and colonise. More US support for authoritarian regimes in the ME, more US bases built all over. More US killing of innocent Muslim people, with joystick controlled drones. Change foreign shitpolicy, not improve TSA annoyances.

I would advise against using those. If the TSA screeners see those on the body scan, they’re likely to pull you aside for a full strip search. I seriously doubt that the screeners can tell the difference between flying pasties and plastic explosives by looking at the scan images. And, even if they could, they’re likely to assume that you’ve got explosives hidden behind the pasties.

I flew out of OHare yesterday, and I was completely ready to face the x-ray attendant and say defiantly “I… OPT… OUT” and then get body groped while I hum the Battle Hymn of the Republic. But instead I was waved to the metal detectors. I was going to try again coming home from Philly, but I don’t think they have the Rapiscans. So now I have civil disobedience blue balls.

If Chertoff and Pistole are smart they’ll instruct screeners to revert to traditional x-rays until “opt-out” day is over, thus deflating the energy of the grassroots protest against the invasive procedures and then resuming business as usual after the holiday weekend.

What’s so hard about using advanced software to analyze scans and output a simple body outline while highlighting contrasting objects/areas? We’ve been watching real-time augmented reality for some time now, specifically in football…what kind of people develop a machine that show you as naked?

As one in the airport/aviation business for thirty years, people who think this is a safer and faster method are ignorant fools. I will not go into details but i will say this, when the next terrorist shoves the latest explosive technology into their body cavity…then what? This entire process is more a testament to capitalism merging with the desire by the powers that be to get the US Citizenry accustomed to the fascist state.

You morons who think this is benevolent safety better get a clue. This is training. I would like to fly with ‘Guns and Knives’ airlines. We have become a nation of pantie waists. The capitalists making billions on war making machinery and now terrorist detection are bankrupting us. We are being manipulated into the evisceration of the body and soul of America.

We need to reel it all in and focus on the United States of America, people. Does anyone hear me out there?

Am I really the only person that thinks we shouldn’t be asking the question “would this device catch the X bomb” but rather “is this device worth the price (in time, money, liberties, etc.)?” and “might this money be better spent elsewhere?”

It seems like everyone in the TSA and most people in the media have some delusional fixation on preventing any *airplane* bombing of any kind which, given how safe air travel is in general, seems like a terrible way to spend our time & money. Let’s stop acting like there is such a creature as perfectly safe travel and instead deal with acceptable risks. Stop acting like passengers need to “know” that there are no bombs on board. Stop asking if scenario X could be prevented.

It does neither. One of these machines takes about 15 seconds to do a full scan, literally an order of magnitude longer than walking through a metal detector. And they can’t detect anything in body cavities.

And even if the were faster and more effective, the fact that you’re tossing away your rights and privacy so cavalierly is terrifying. Please tell me you don’t vote.

Why in the world would you assume it would make your security checks either faster or safer?

I mean I’d put up with a cavity search if it guaranteed fast, effective, useful security. But it wouldn’t. It would just be humiliating hand-waving in order to make people feel kind of almost sort of safer a bit, but also sore.

Unfortunately I had to make several trips by air last week and (being I am old) decided to “chance” the Porno-scanner. Two out of the five airports I went through had the machine. Because I have a replaced knee I received the “I wanna touch you all over, And over again, I wanna touch you all over, Till the flight closes in” “pat-down” whether I went through the Porno-scanner or Metal Detector.

I opt out not because I’m prudish (I’m French, we have no modesty) but because I am a software engineer. There is a lot of software to control these machines, and it’s mostly new code. Which means it has bugs. Many bugs.
Assuming the radiation level generated by the machines is safe (I have no expertise to judge one way or the other), that assumes normal operations. That’s a big assumption.
In “normal” software, when there is a non-fatal bug it results in something looking strange to the user, or some incorrect transaction going through, which eventually might get caught. In these machines, unless the bug completely disables the machine, how can you tell there is problem? Your hair is not going to catch fire because the radiation level is 100 stronger than normal.